Child care crisis
I am very concerned about the lack of child care funding that is looming. If the N.C. General Assembly doesn’t fund early childhood education by June 30, nearly one-third of childcare providers statewide — an estimated 1,500 facilities — may have to shut down, leaving 91,660 kids without care and families without options.
I join others across the state calling on Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore to acknowledge that access to high-quality child care is essential for children’s development and a healthy, competitive workforce. As federal COVID relief dollars come to an end this month, our child care system is at the edge of a funding cliff. How can Berger and Moore choose vouchers for wealthy private school families over basic child care for hundreds of thousands of children in our state?
Our families and businesses need them to recognize the urgency of this moment and take immediate action.
Linda Levy, Matthews
Berger is right
I agree with N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger’s skeptical position on basing teachers’ pay on advanced degrees. (June 18) A teacher’s raise should be based on the quality of teaching, student performance and overall contributions to the school, rather than simply obtaining an advanced degree. Effective teachers who make a significant impact on students’ learning should be rewarded, regardless of their formal education level.
Pay based on advanced degrees does not necessarily correlate with improved student outcomes. Research and my career experience has shown that higher degrees do not always equate to better teaching career performance. Merit-based raises could incentivize teachers to continually improve their teaching methods and engage more actively in professional development that directly enhances their classroom effectiveness.
Thomas Uhl, Mooresville
Bump stocks
Regarding “Court ruling on bump stocks misses the point,” (June 19 Opinion):
I bet a lot of my fellow conservatives agreed with this New York Daily News editorial reprinted in The Observer condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on bump stocks. Dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that the court shouldn’t parse statutes to the point they end up subverting the will of Congress. Better said yet was the writer’s observation that Justice Clarence Thomas “tortured the dictionary” in concluding that citizens should not be prohibited from using a bump stock as deadly as a machine gun.
If it looks and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Phil Clutts, Harrisburg
Gen Z interviews
Regarding “Commentary | So what if Gen Z applicants bring their parents to a job interview? (June 13):
It has been years since I worked for a Fortune 500 company hiring hundreds. In my managerial experience I never interviewed anyone for a position who dragged a parent along. The most egregious interviewee may have shown up without a necktie or in non-business attire.
My how things have changed. If a parent tagged along for Junior’s interview, I would have performed a perfunctory interview and immediately discarded the application the second the door closed on their way out. What a society of arrested adolescents we have spawned. God help us if this becomes an accepted practice.
Robert Cassell Jr., Charlotte
Health care debt
The writer is a retired neurosurgeon and health care advocate.
I’m happy to read about Vice President Kamala Harris’ interest in eliminating medical debt from credit reports (June 14). I’m also encouraged to see more news stories about people, particularly cancer victims, filing bankruptcy due to medical bills. The government is finally beginning to gently push back on Medicare Advantage, now that its abuses are more obvious.
Most of the proposed solutions to these issues involve tweaking our current inefficient health care system. What we really need and deserve is a comprehensive fix like Improved Medicare for All. I pray we’ll elect enough serious candidates this fall to finally do something substantial about health care. It’s time to fix the problem and stop the tweaking.
George Bohmfalk, Charlotte